But I Love You
by chivalrysdead
Summary: Michael thinks about Maria after 'Behind the Music'.


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Title: But I Love You  
Author: Emily  
Rating: PG 13  
Category: Michael POV, Maria/Michael.  
Summary: Michael thinks about Maria after 'Behind the Music'.  
Spoilers/Timeline: Set in the final scene of 'Behind the Music'.  
  
**But I Love You  
**  
But I love you. Michael had wanted to shout it after her, pathetically. He'd known it would be pathetic. He'd know how weak and pointless the words would have been and he'd wanted to shout them all the same. They would have been desperate words and he'd have shouted them if he'd thought they would stop her for a fraction of a second.  
  
Michael knew they wouldn't have. He'd seen it in her eyes, eyes that had looked so different from his Maria's eyes. And he supposed suddenly that if what she said was true - if this girl he'd fallen in love with wasn't the real her and if for the past two years she had been somebody else - then she really wasn't his Maria.  
  
It had been hard for him to recognise her as she sat there calmly beside him and said she wanted to break up. Calmly. All so calmly. Calmly telling him she loved him more than he could imagine and calmly walking away. All so fucking calmly.  
  
Michael had asked her if she would come back to him. A question he couldn't quite bear to hear the answer to. Not such an important question compared with ones like why and when and what did I do though. He'd wanted to ask them too. The when tugged at his insides. Had it been a sudden moment for her? Maybe she'd glanced across at him flipping burgers or woken up some morning curled in his arms and just knew.  
  
Michael remembers her sleeping - with blond hair brushing his chest and her arm light and everything on his back. Right now as he just sits there all he does is remember. His legs haven't quite understood this yet and don't seem to move - so he sits. It's raining and Michael remembers standing at her window in the rain. He remembers her holding him in her arms that night. He remembers and he hadn't known there was quite this much to remember until now.  
  
He figures that maybe he'd have noticed something was wrong if their relationship had been perfect to begin with. Thing was, there had always been cracks. But cracks this deep, he would have noticed. He should have noticed. There were more questions yet, like how could I have noticed and is it because of Billy.  
  
And he didn't think it was and didn't that make this all so much worse? There were so many questions but she was gone and even if she'd been there then Michael wouldn't have gotten his answers. Michael stands up but his legs still don't understand. His heart neither.  
  
Michael doesn't want to go back to his apartment. His apartment where they used to make love on the sofa and in his bed and sometimes other places. His apartment where there's a picture of Maria sitting in the living room by the TV. Where he didn't pay his electricity bill and so she brought dozens of candles over for him. Her jacket's there too, hanging by the door.  
  
She can goddamn come and fetch it, he thinks. He's not going to hand her things over in a cardboard break up box. And that'll make a difference to this, Michael thinks bitterly and his lips make to curve in some self- mocking smile but they don't. See, his lips don't understand either. No, his lips miss her already.  
  
Michael walks some more because he doesn't know where to go. Maria's was where he used to go and he sure as hell can't go there now. Not that he wants to go and wait there in the rain by the window of a girl who was his Maria up until tonight. That would be pathetic too. He won't go to Max and listen to Max come out with the bull he calls advice.  
  
And there was no-one else. Not Isabel who was married now or Kyle who wouldn't understand or Liz who would tell him the same bull as Max. No, there was no one else. So Michael keeps on walking and not one part of him understands. He's angry now. At Maria and at himself and at this stupid town where you can keep on walking and eventually you'll return to where you started. Sitting miserably in the rain and not understanding. And sometimes maybe you'll end up in the desert, that vast space where the stars are a little brighter and clearer than in the town. But if you'd gotten all the way to the desert with your pain then you probably wouldn't want to look at the stars. There was a greater loneliness in the desert than there was anywhere else and so Michael kept on walking and eventually returned to where he started.  
  
Seemed like he'd been here a hundred thousand times before. He sits down again on the bench and now he looks at the stars and they're still bright and clear as though everything is the same. Nothing has changed, not on a cosmic scale. Not on the scale of alien hunters and FBI agents and betrayals from centuries ago in space. Nothing has changed, he thinks with that same self mocking humour.  
  
But I love you. Michael thinks it hopelessly and he knows it's hopeless. He hates her too but he loves her and loving her, that makes the hating her all the more vivid. He hates her but it's hard to hate someone who he loves. He loves her and that's why he hates her.  
  
"But I love you" Michael says it out loud and every part of him doesn't understand. Mostly they just miss her. He says it out loud and hopes it'll sound wrong and not true and maybe it won't be. It is though. He knows it and sitting in that silent empty night where the stars hang there still, bright and clear, he despairs of it.  
  
End. 


End file.
